Open primaries are an anathema to our democratic process? What? Seriously?
And people are not only reccing this sentiment, they are agreeing with it wholeheartedly in the comments section? Have I stumbled onto RedState?
We live in a democracy. Everyone gets a vote. In our democracy, there are really only two choices on the presidential level — Democrats and Republicans. Essentially, some here are arguing that anyone in America who does not want to belong to a particular party should be excluded from the primary process. They should have no vote.
I can’t think of anything more inane or undemocratic.
I asked those supporting this notion if they could cite even a single instance of voters “sneaking in” and throwing a presidential nomination to a candidate who wouldn’t have won otherwise. Even one. Someone cited Trump. Seriously.
Trump is not winning because of some concerted, nefarious effort by Dems to cross over and make him the GOP nominee. He’s winning due to voter sentiment among conservatives, among the GOP base.
The (bizarre) fear among some here of cross-overs sabotaging a presidential nominating contest is inane because it is unfounded. It’s as inane and bogus as the horrible voter ID laws the GOP promotes to prevent (nonexistent) voter fraud and limit voter participation.
I never thought I’d see Democrats arguing seriously for limiting voter participation. I thought that was a sentiment confined to the GOP.
A commenter in the cited diary wrote:
Selecting party nominees is not a government function, it's a party function.
As I noted in my response, in that case, we should do away with publicly-funded primaries altogether and go back to the days when nominees were selected in backrooms by cigar-chomping party bosses.
The argument in favor of closed primaries are very much akin to Republicans yelling, “Voter fraud! Voter fraud!”
Please, someone who supports this undemocratic nonsense provide an example on the presidential level of non-party voters throwing a nomination to candidate who otherwise would not have won the nomination. Even one.
Bizarre...